


Red Sands

by bluntblade



Series: Tales from the Timeskip [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Resistance (Cartoon)
Genre: Custom Knights of Ren, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Gladiators, Gray Jedi Rey (Star Wars), Lesbian Rey (Star Wars), Missions Gone Wrong, Multi, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rescue Missions, Rey Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 20,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24558553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluntblade/pseuds/bluntblade
Summary: A mission gone badly wrong leaves Rey and Finn fighting for survival as gladiators, while their friends race to break them out.
Relationships: Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Finn/Rose Tico, Jessika Pava & Rose Tico, Kaydel Ko Connix/Rey, Kylo Ren & Rey, Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron & Kazuda Xiono, Poe Dameron & Rey, Rey & Rose Tico
Series: Tales from the Timeskip [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719019
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

_Gladiatorial combat wasn’t common – certainly not compared to the time of the Sith Empire, thousands of years prior – but in the days of the First Order’s dominance, there were a few dozen notorious arenas. The First Order took many slaves, in unprecedented numbers after Kylo Ren ascended to the throne. Most were used as cheap and expendable labour, building the regime’s war machine. But there were those whose skill in combat was recognised, and they were auctioned off to the owners of the arenas._

_The worst of these were known throughout the Galaxy; Tarko-Se, Grakkus… Magna Leptus. Perhaps not the largest, but certainly one of the vilest and most popular. It came under First Order control within a year of Snoke taking power, and perhaps the old tyrant’s decadent tastes inclined him to favour the Coliseum of Magna Leptus. More than a few of his rivals and their enforcers met their ends in that arena._

_Certainly the man he appointed to run the planet was favourable to the arena. Benefitting greatly from the patronage of Governor Comaudus, it often served as a favoured means of execution, and its managers grew fat on the blood of the gladiators who died to redden the sands. This grisly state of affairs ran on for years, the masters of the arena striving to create ever more depraved spectacles of carnage for their audiences both in the stands and on the holonet._

_And then one day, a mission gone awry brought two Resistance fighters to the Coliseum of Magna Leptus: the former Stormtrooper Finn, and Rey, the Last Jedi._

They weren't sure who’d spotted them. What mattered was that someone had, and now there were guards on their heels.

Rey and Finn pelted down the streets, hearing shouts somewhere behind them. Above their heads, the sky was thick with towers of white stone, bulbous towers alternating with sheer square ramparts. Further down, it was a riot of bright colours, heavy drapes and a confused mass of beings. And cobblestones, which threatened to unbalance them every third stride.

Magna Leptus was, overall, a confusion of a city. It had been hectic enough when they were just winding through the city with the others. This whole bloody mission had been about slipping into the city, locating a Resistance spymaster and his people and pulling them out.

Bogatt Silay had been invaluable to running intelligence operations in this sector, operating under the First Order’s nose for months. But as the enemy tightened their grip on the region in preparation for further offensives, they had decided to scour the Leptus system once and for all. Unfortunately for the party Poe had brought here to secure Silay, that meant a drastically expanded Stormtrooper garrison – for now uneasily sharing duties with the local guards.

And where those locals were easily eluded, the Stormtroopers were much more attentive. It had been Rey and Finn’s bad luck to be caught in the open when a squad turned a corner. They’d run, hoping to distract them from the others – and succeeded. Which was, alas, a limited source of comfort.

Rose and Jess were with Kazuda Xiono – a former protégé of Poe’s and one of their most prolific intelligence agents, who’d already made contact with Silay and was meant to lead them to him.

Poe had stayed with the Falcon. “Rey, Finn, what’s happening?”

“Stormtroopers,” Finn rasped.

“Tell me the others got clear,” Rey panted. The colourful sari she wore over her usual clothes had become a hindrance now, and she caught and tore it to run more freely.

Finn's voice was still muffled by the fabric over his mouth. “Yeah, they're outta sight. But,” they skidded to a halt round a corner. “Where the hell are we?”

“Market. The one Kazuda was meant to show us a way around.”

“Hell,” Finn swore. “We got any idea of a way to our guy?”

“Sewer pipe by the antique armoury, Kaz said. Under the old temple.”

“Why’s it always sewers?”

“Because we’re the heroes?”

He grunted. “Let’s go, I see the temple.”

They ducked through a narrow alley, trying not to draw any attention from other pedestrians. The sirens and klaxons elsewhere in the system were faint, but they were definitely having an effect here. People were retreating into doorways, and the crowds got thinner.

And as they made their way through another alley, Finn in the lead, Rey felt something in the Force. An uneasy ripple of threat.

“Hold up,” she hissed. He froze, flattening himself against the wall.

“Guards?”

“No…” She let her awareness expand, reading the emotions of the individuals ahead. Those weren’t the emotions she associated with guards. These minds were coloured by one thought above all – avarice. “Bounty hunters.”

Finn checked his blaster. “Ideal.”

Some way off, Rose and Jess were being led down into another pipe.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Kazuda Xiono beckoned them down.

Rose tried to ignore what her nose was telling her, and clambered down the ladder after him. Jess followed, pausing to pull the grate back into place.

“We clean?” Jess asked.

The other woman lingered for a moment. “Poor choice of words, but I think so.” She shinned down the ladder to join them.

Rose regarded her perhaps a little longer than was necessary. Then she reached for her radio. “Rey, what’s your situation?”

“Not ideal,” came the whispered reply. “Finn and I are in one piece, but we’re – kriff!”

And suddenly all Rose could hear over the link was the sound of fighting.

One of the bounty hunters had heard something or caught a glimpse – it didn’t really matter which. What mattered was that he’d pitched a stun-grenade at them.

Rey intercepted it with the Force and sent it spinning back. She and Finn sprang from cover a second later, already shooting and dropping figures in mismatched armour. There were a dozen or two of them, and three were already down. Doable, Rey thought.

None of the hunters appeared to have any real loyalty to one another. They were just lone hunters who’d partnered up for convenience, and it showed. They didn’t coordinate properly, didn’t know each other’s fighting style the way Finn and Rey did.

As they went, she and Finn snatched up truncheons and met the hunters who chose to get up close, drawing blades to engage them. Dodge, strike back, anticipate the next hunter’s attack and catch him with a quick riposte. It had worked for them enough times before.

It would’ve worked this time, if another stun grenade hadn’t come flying in from behind them and sent them flying forward.

Rey hit the ground awkwardly, feeling groggy. She forced herself back up – right into the stock of a blaster rifle. She saw stars and when her vision cleared, she was staring down the barrel of the weapon.

“Damnit,” she rasped. The guards had been drawn by the sounds of fighting and waited just long enough for the last fighter to go down.

“Take them!” barked a sergeant. A taser goad jabbed the back of her neck, and she was out.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose slumped against a wall, shaking.

“Rose!” Jess called, coming back around the corner.

“T-they got them,” Rose stammered. “They captured Rey and Finn.” The world was spinning, knocked clean off its axis.

“Kriff,” Jess breathed, and pulled Rose into a hug. She gave her a moment before speaking. “Then we need to push on, find out where they are, and bust them out.”

“But-”

“Rose, come on. If the First Order has them, they’ll be trying to get them to Kylo Ren. But they’re gonna have to lock them up first. That gives us a chance.” “Kazuda,” she called. “How far?”

“A few hundred metres, not far at all.”

Jess turned back to Rose. “See, Rose? First Order’s gonna have their hands full with those two, and we’ll figure something out.”

They walked on, Rose feeling numb and shivery all at once. But no, Jess was right. There had to be some way to get Finn and Rey out of this.

“Hold up!” Kazuda said, stopping at what looked like a nondescript stretch of wall. He pulled out a comms unit and keyed in a brief sequence of numbers.

A panel on the wall smoothly hissed open, revealing an optical scanner. Kazuda put his eye to it.

Finally, there was a voice through a speaker. “Codeword?”

“Troublemaker,” Kazuda responded.

The section of wall retracted and slid sideways, revealing two stolid Togruta armed with blaster rifles. “I thought we were expecting more,” one of them growled. Then he turned and stepped aside. “Well sir, these ones are legit.”

An old Twilek, red-skinned and with white-banded lekku, stood behind them. “Ah, Kazuda, and friends, I see.”

Rose spoke for both of them. “Bogatt Silay?”

He inclined his head. “At your service – ah, Lieutenants Tico and Pava, am I correct? You’d best come in.”

Grateful and relieved, they piled in, but not without a careful backward glance, and knowing that their mission had just become a lot harder.

Governor Caumodas was, in his considered and strictly private opinion, perhaps not an exemplary First Order officer. That was largely why he occupied this office, on a world which was being slowly absorbed into the First Order rather than a recent conquest. Magna Leptus was a venal, corrupt world, and so Snoke had given them a governor they could easily do business with.

Which was only right, Caumodas thought. Let the fanatics like Hux and Pryde handle things at the sharp end. A palace was much more comfortable than a Star Destroyer.

And oh, praise be, a prize had fallen into his lap which would see him exalted over all of High Command. The Last Jedi and the Traitor Stormtrooper, in the custody of his troops.

“Governor, wonderful tidings indeed,” beamed his aide. “Shall we put them on a shuttle now? We can requisition a cruiser easily enough and have them on the way to Gorothad by midnight.”

Caumodas brought his hands up to his chest, his fingertips tapping against one another. “No. And you will wait until tomorrow morning to send the missive to High Command.”

The man paled. “But sir-”

“But nothing! I am governor of Magna Leptus – this world turns by my decree and the taxes flow into my coffers.” The aide tried to speak again, but Caumodas cut him off, gesturing out of the window towards the baroque immensity of the Coliseum, the mighty arena which Magna Leptus was famed for. “And we know where the most credits flow from.”

He ran a finger over the marble statuette of a gladiator, which sat on his desk.

“Now, let us consider. An announcement tomorrow gives us a weekend, in which the moneyed and the masses alike will flock to the arena. We put the word out that we’ll have a pair of new and mysterious combatants, newly captured. Rumours are already running throughout the city, and once they are unveiled, our audience will be crawling over one another for the next two days of battles.”

“Not to mention the billions who will tune in over the holonet,” murmured his captain of the guard.

Caumodus nodded. All the more revenue, both from viewings and the bets which would be placed on the fights. These never-to-be-repeated spectacles, the last time that anyone would see a Jedi Knight in battle.

“So we indulge our audience, and line our pockets,” he smiled. “ _Then_ the Supreme Leader’s delegates arrive, we hand over the captives alive or dead, and…” He grinned languidly. “I’ll have the commendation of Kylo Ren, and enough riches for ten generations to burn through.”

His staff were no less flustered at these words, which disappointed him. Did they not think they would share in the riches?

The aide tried to find a tactful way around the issue. “Inspired, sir, but the risk-”

Caumodas trained a bored eye on him. “There is no risk. Pass the order on and direct the arresting officers to the Coliseum.”

An anonymous, brutal block of an armoured transport ferried Rey and Finn across the city, escorted by several enforcement vehicles and a pair of AT-ST walkers. Within, they were both cuffed to a central bar, with a Stormtrooper sitting either side and a blaster held to their heads.

“I’m hoping they let us watch,” sneered one of the troopers. “I wanna see you pulped and smeared all over the sands.”

“What are you talking about?” Finn asked, but a nasty suspicion was already forming in his mind.

The man pointed, and Finn twisted awkwardly in his seat. A massive, hollow cylinder of red stone rose up above the nearby buildings, festooned with First Order banners and local insignia. An amphitheatre.

There was no mistaking the purpose of a building like this, even before they saw the stylised statues of warriors, each ten metres tall, ringing the structure. It had been mentioned in their briefing and besides, they’d both heard the stories. This was the infamous Coliseum of Magna Leptus.

“See now?” grinned the trooper. “No chopping block or gallows for you scum. That’s how you’re gonna die, and the whole Galaxy will be watching.”


	3. Chapter 3

Silay’s house turned out to be well-appointed, but Rose noted the telltale signs of discreetly installed blast doors and other defensive measures at various points. The old spymaster had applied a great deal of effort to making his home secure, and all the various staff around the place looked highly capable.

He caught Rose’s questioning look. “I’ve been here for well over a decade. Had plenty of time to bed in. But I think we’ll skip the tour and bring you straight to my inner sanctum.”

This turned out to be a rather sparse office, decorated with a handful of abstract paintings and one onyx statue – perhaps a stylised depiction of a Jedi, though it could as easily be a Nightsister of Dathormir, Rose supposed.

“Are we considering dropping the extraction?” Jess asked worriedly.

“We can’t,” responded Kazuda vehemently. “We won’t get another shot at this.”

Jess and Rose both looked warily at him. Neither of them liked being put on edge by a friend’s fervour, but in the wake of Crait, they were reluctantly growing used to it.

“He’s correct,” Silay said. “The noose is tightening. With Ren’s offensive against the Core and Mid Rim, it’ll soon be nigh-impossible to plot a course from here which won’t take one into a war zone or worse, a system under First Order control.” He sighed, then reached for a comms unit. “Before we go any further, it might be best to loop in the commander. Ladies, if you would?”

“Of course.” Rose leaned forward and keyed a number into the proffered comms unit.

The Millennium Falcon was tucked away in a discreet hangar with three Black Squadron fighters. They’d slipped in under cover of darkness to meet with Kazuda’s squad, before the two groups headed out into the city.

Apart from Jess, all the pilots had remained on site. Which was why Poe had been prowling the Falcon’s hold for nearly an hour now. Suralinda was similarly twitchy. Hallis, a young woman who’d flown with them at D’Qar and Crait and subsequently been added to Black Squadron, was playing Dejarik with Chewbacca.

“Commander,” Suralinda said. “Are you sure we shouldn’t head out after them?”

Poe shook his head. “The opposition will be looking for us. We can’t just go throwing more elements into the mess.”

He saw the look on her face, and felt its echo in the conflict inside him. The old Poe would have got straight out there, and he found himself asking more and more if he was becoming over-cautious. Added to that, it was Finn and Rey in captivity. Any mistake, and he’d be losing not just close friends but two of the Resistance’s figureheads.

He drew a breath. “We have people in the city who know the situation better than us, Sura. Sit tight and wait to hear from Jess and Rose.”

Suralinda nodded. “Times like this, I do wish we’d all spent some time under Holdo.” She glanced at Hallis, sitting across the Dejarik table from Chewie and frowning as she contemplated her next move. “All the new members you took in, Poe, they can sit for hours.”

“Thank you,” Hallis said. Then, frowning, “How does he know so many tactics? I can’t surprise him.”

“He’s nearly two hundred years old,” Poe told her. “And he’s spent a big chunk of that aboard ships, playing this game.”

Chewie growled something along the lines of him having always been good at the game, thank you very much.

“OK, OK, but experience counts. Maybe go easy on the girl…” A beeping noise intruded. “Comms unit.”

They rushed to the cockpit and threw themselves into the seats. “Dameron here.”

Silay’s image flickered into life. “Salutations, Commander. It seems we have a rescue plan to make, as well as an extraction.”

“Then let’s not delay.”

Seeing Poe’s image again gave Jess and Rose some much-needed reassurance, though Poe himself didn’t look any less worried than them.

He spoke first. “We’ll have to determine where they’re being held, first. I’ve been going over the briefs and the sensible places appear to be under the Governor’s Estate or the Hadian Fort.”

“A good assessment, Commander, but one which doesn’t take into account the character of the First Order governor.” Silay shook his head. “I’ve been watching Caumodas long enough to know what he’ll do with two prisoners like your friends. I trust you saw the arena on your way in – heard the stories about it, perhaps?”

“Yep,” Rose said. “So you’re saying…”

“Absolutely. A Jedi and a Rebel fighter with Stormtrooper training? Caumodas would kick himself if he didn’t put them out on the sand.”

“So as well as them being taken prisoner, they’ll be fighting for their lives every day?”

“Yes. However,” Silay said, holding up a finger for emphasis. “There are advantages and opportunities here. The arena is by its very nature, rather more open to access than the local prisons – not easy, but it presents certain chances. Indeed, we had entertained the notion of organising a breakout from there before.”

“So you’re saying an abandoned plan has become our fallback?”

That got him a tolerant look from the old Twi’lek. “I would have phrased it in a rather less… doomy manner. And to continue my optimistic slant, the circumstances give us a definite timeframe – four full days, by my reckoning. A local festival is upcoming, which always means a long weekend and suitably elaborate games in the Coliseum. Caumodas will want to maximise the value of his acquisitions.”

“I hate him already,” muttered Jess. Slavers were, after all, a particular poison to her.

“Which is to say,” Poe responded, not noticing. “We have some planning to do. I trust you've some agents in mind for this?”

Silay gave him a smile. “Indeed I have. In that regard, our current situation gives us something of an advantage - all my people are gathered in the city. There is one particular operative who I expect will be of use to you.” He raised his voice. “Ki’rii?”

Through the door came a short but solidly build young Pantoran women, easily recognisable by her blue skin and gold eyes. She wore an engineer’s jumpsuit, with cut-off sleeves which revealed a swirl of gold tattoos running up each arm. Those markings were the only thing about her which wasn’t scruffy – white hair in a loose and messy bun, scuffed brown combat boots and a set of goggles perched haphazardly on her head.

It was, then, probably unsurprising that before Silay could make the introductions, she’d clapped eyes on them and said “Bugger me. Tico and Pava?” Then she saw Poe – her eyes went wide and she snapped off a quick salute. “Commander Dameron.”

Silay laughed. “I’d ask for better manners than that, my dear – but yes” He gestured. “Ki’rii Volo-”

“Actually,” Rose smiled. “We’ve met before. Ki’rii was on Crait with us.”

They hadn’t really spoken before, but they’d got acquainted after the escape, particularly on Ryloth. Ki’rii was irrepressible, and delighted to see them again, swapping a brief flurry of updates.

“But,” she caught herself, her boisterous grin suddenly clouded by suspicion. “Shouldn’t there be four of you? The Jedi and your-”

“Boyfriend?” Rose finished for her. “Yeah. They’ve been taken by the security forces, and according to Mr Silay, that means they’re going to the Coliseum.”

“Yikes. So what’s the plan?”

“Scope the arena,” Silay said. “In the stands and on the ground. Determine where our friends are being held. We can begin fabricating credentials to get you into the cells and maintenance areas-”

“Though that’ll take a few days,” Jess interjected.

“Two, in this case,” he replied smoothly. “We have a good slicer in the form of Ki’rii here, and a friend in the records office who can facilitate the rest, but you’re broadly correct. We will be operating under a time constraint.”

Jess and Rose exchanged a look, before Jess spoke. “You must’ve scoped the arena before?”

“Assuredly. Still, we need to determine just where they are being held within the complex – I trust you saw it, it’s an enormous structure and underneath that, it’s a warren.”

That made sense, Rose thought. _We’ve gotta look like we know the place. Listen to the spymaster_. “So we’ve got some studying to do as well. Have you got any schematics?”


	4. Chapter 4

The journey to the cells beneath the arena was about as brusque and unpleasant as Rey and Finn had expected. The place was a sprawl of corridors. Every step of the way from the entry point, they had been manhandled by the guards who surrounded them.

Their personal effects had been roughly confiscated and they’d been issued with plain, rough clothing before they were each thrust into a bare stone cell. Durasteel bars, a basic shower to the rear, a sparse and uncomfortable bed for each of them.

The floor was hard and cold underfoot. An off-white chiffon was all she’d been given to wear.

“Well,” came Finn’s voice from next door. “Looks like this is us.”

They had other neighbours, but no one seemed keen to introduce themselves. This existence, she was willing to wager, must be crushing.

Finn’s thoughts were on the same thing. “Did you read the file on this place?” he asked.

“I didn’t make time.” The essential briefings and her training had taken up all her time prior to reaching the city. She frowned, knowing the reproachful look which would be on his face. “What did it say?”

“They use this place to get rid of condemned criminals, but they’re brought in and killed off on the same day. Anyone down here has been taken into slavery by the First Order. So if we can start communicating with our fellow captives, we might be able to score some allies. Admittedly, that’s pending us having a way out.”

“And we’re rather behind on that.”

Rey slumped down on her bed, thoughts turning furiously but not yielding any viable plan of escape. They could possibly break out of here, grab some weapons off the guards and run like hell. Maybe even steal a uniform as well, which might get them a few seconds before they were recognised.

But after that… neither of them knew the layout either of this place or the city beyond, not in any real detail despite the maps they’d studied before. Getting disoriented was what had got them captured in the first place, and this time every guard and Stormtrooper would be after them from the start.

“And the original mission hasn’t stopped,” Finn added when she raised it with him. “From what the guards said they’re keeping us for the weekend, so that gives us all a couple days.”

“So we wait for the others to find us?”

“More constructive than that. We can still get a feel for the place. I don’t like it either, but Poe’s out there, and you’ve heard the stories about Silay and the stuff he’s pulled before. They know what they’re doing, so let’s give them time and save our strength for now.”

“Roll call,” Poe said. On the hologram, he folded his arms and leaned back. “Ladies, I'm truly impressed.”

Rose smiled nervously.

The two human women had been fitted with extravagant dresses, and Ki’rii had been given a sharp scarlet uniform. “First Order prejudices being what they are,” a Bothan on Silay’s staff had said, “non-humans tend to get scrutinised unless they’re either known aristos, or the help.” He’d then agreed with Ki’rii’s two-syllable assessment of the First Order.

“Remember your roles,” Silay said. “Rose, you are…”

“The bored young wife of a holo magnate.”

“Ki’rii?”

“Her valette.” Which wasn’t even a proper word, but Ki’rii had insisted on it.

“And Jess?”

“The friend that Rose’s husband hasn’t been smart enough to twig is actually her mistress.”

“Man has even less wit than he has taste,” chuckled Ki’rii.

“Alright, alright.” Poe held up his hand. “We’d better get you on your way.”

She glanced sidelong at Jess and Ki’rii. They were being sent to scope the arena and get a sense of the layout. Kazuda and his operatives, meanwhile, would discreetly poke around the lower levels, figuring out where Rey and Finn were being held.

Then their findings would be used for the next stages; orchestrating and setting off the breakout. Rose thought she was starting to get a handle on how patient she’d need to be. Unfortunately, she hadn’t reckoned with the experience of the games.

Some time after the morning meal, drums began to beat up in the arena. The huge, tolling impacts reverberated in the cells below.

Rey glanced up at the ceiling. “The games?”

“Yeah,” someone croaked, off to her right. She stuck her head through the bars, finding Finn was already craning round to her left. The speaker was a heavily scarred Trandoshan. “Ah, so you’ll be the new blood. We all heard talk… but I assumed they were exaggerated when they said they were hauling in the Regicide and the Traitor.”

“I wasn’t the one who killed-” Rey shook her head. Rather a pointless hair to pick down here. “Where’d they get you from?”

“Bogdan. First Order took the system five weeks after the Hosnian Cataclysm. Some bastard called Stolan. Heard of him?”

“No.”

“Well, he’ll be infamous soon. That’s a man with a taste for burning cities. Anyway, after he did Bogdan I spent a few months in a labour camp, before the governor decided he could make some money off a few of us. So I ended up here.”

“And if someone offered you a way out,” Finn said. “If someone offered you a way of hitting back, would you take it?”

The Trandoshan eyed him warily. “You’ll need a lot more than three bodies to pull that of. But if you can find them and if I’m alive by then… in that case yes, I’d be interested.” He paused. “It’s Salisk, by the way. You two don’t need any introduction.”

Rey smiled. “Well, seeing as you’re not a friend to the First Order, you ought to know we’re not planning to stick around. We’ve friends on the outside, and if we survive long enough to get out, well… we could do with some extra muscle.”

Salisk chuckled. “Well, let me see what I’m doing this week. Hmm… trying not to die for someone else’s entertainment, then trying not again to die for the amusement of some rich jerks… your offer sounds good.”

There were raised voices down the corridors now, and the hiss and clang of doors opening and shutting.

“But for now, another day on the red sands,” Salisk grunted as uniformed attendants came into view. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a bad-tempered Acklay. Stay alive, Rey and Finn.”


	5. Chapter 5

There was another hour or so after Salisk was taken. Rey and Finn limbered up and paced, waiting for their turn.

Finally, a clutch of attendants came to their cells. Several were toting taser goads.

“You’re that scared of us, huh?” Finn drawled.

“Just try it,” smirked the one who seemed to be in charge. He was large; powerfully built but paunchy. “They don’t like the merchandise battered, but we can hit you in places where it don’t show. As is,” he jerked his head, and one of his men unlocked the cell door and hauled it open. “We’re here to get you presentable.”

Two more attendants came forward with pieces of armour.

“These’ll be fitting you. But first… there is the oil.” He motioned to a Chiss woman, who came forward with a plain clay bottle.

She gave him a look. Perhaps bravely, more likely foolishly, he pressed his case. “For the aesthetics.” It came out sounding like _ai-yurse-the’icks_.

Reluctantly, she took the items and set them on her bedroll. When she turned back, the lead attendant had moved a little into the cell and was grinning more broadly.

He was also dangerously close to drooling. “Now, if you would just disrobe we can -”

“Touch me and your nose will be flat and ten cubits wide across your face.”

The man lost his eager look. “The ringmaster does insist…”

“Then your colleague can help.” She held out a hand and indicated the Chiss woman, before jabbing a finger at the man. “You, on the other hand, and the rest – get out of my cell.”

So she found herself having her hair combed, and then oiled along with the rest of her, before the armour was put in place. There was also make-up, dark red kohl around her eyes and a vivid crimson for her lips. She looked entirely unlike herself now, Rey thought.

She reflected, pacing in the hall outside the arena. Beside her was the gate, a multilayered thicket of spikes and blades. Beyond it, she could just about see the arena, a great expanse of sand lit by fiery braziers, and just make out a gladiator and some reptilian creature circling one another.

For a while she’d watched, before deciding that wouldn’t do much for her morale and going back to pacing. Little bars of light poked through the mesh, reflecting off her armour and skin.

Rey was just about willing to concede that in one or two hypothetical scenarios, she might just like being dressed like this. A life-or-death situation, however, was definitely not one of them. _They’re trying to kill me_ , she railed internally, _which would be bad enough on its own, but no, they went one further. They’ve turned me into a tart as well._

She had greaves and vambraces, but her upper arms were left bare. For her torso she had a leather tunic and a breastplate which, to her great annoyance, more resembled a bodice than any kind of practical armour. _A bloody boobplate!_

It also ended at the bottom of her ribcage, in a flagrant insult to the idea of proper protection. “Who the hell’s idea was it to make armour like this?” she growled, angrily regarding her bare midriff.

“Hey,” came Finn’s voice. “Just be glad you get to wear something up top.”

She turned, saw him, and laughed aloud. They’d slathered him in oil as well, and given him armour which was, to her great surprise, quite a bit skimpier than hers. Finn had vambraces, pauldrons and greaves, but his armour ended at the shoulders and waist, with only a broad leather strap running diagonally across his chest.

“You’re… oh, they’ve -”

“Don’t -”

Rey laughed so hard that she couldn’t actually get any words out, finding herself bent double.

When she’d recovered, Finn glowered at her for a moment before he dropped his shoulders, clasping a hand over his face and slowly dragging it down. “Stars’ end, they’ve made me into a… I don’t know what the word is, actually.”

“I’m sure Poe will be able to tell you, if we make it out.”

“This how you know we’re meant to die in here.”

“This,” she said crossly, “is where not having a bloody working lightsaber gets us.”

Finn turned to look at her and rolled his eyes. “Oh come on, there were more factors at play than that.”

“It would at least have given us better odds back in the marketplace.”

“Rey, if these are our last minutes then I’m not gonna spend them relitigating a broken laser sword.” The attendants laughed at that.

“Fair enough.”

They waited, listening to the noises beyond the gate. There was shouting, cheering… and then screaming and a lot of ripping noises. Finn and Rey exchanged a look, made faces and decided to start talking again.

“Still,” Finn noted, “They’ve given you some good pieces. Those vambraces are… stars afire, that’s Beskar.”

“Truly?” She tapped them together. Beskar was some of the toughest material in the Galaxy. “Kriff, if we make it out I’m hanging onto these.”

“Enough chit-chat,” snarled an attendant. “Here are your weapons.”

Finn was handed a heavy vibro-sword, with no small amount of reluctance on the part of the armourers. Rey gained a shield and an axe, one-handed and with plasma filaments attached to the blade. Nice. She hooked it onto her belt as she was given her helmet.

“At least the weapons are good, but these are just silly.” She showed hers to Finn. “What’s this even meant to be?” It was a stylised beast’s head in burnished metal and brass leaf, all long spines and a toothy grin for the rim where it enclosed her face. There were even iron tusks protruding from the cheekguards.

“Terentatek, I think. As for me…” Finn studied the silvery helmet he’d been handed. This one had a long crest sticking out to the rear, and a half-ring of crystal eyes around the forehead. “Acklay.”

“Salisk’s date,” she muttered.

Finn was inspecting his helmet further, taking in the absurd craftsmanship, “You know, we could probably buy a whole suit of Beskar plate for the same price as this crap.”

His head turned. Out in the arena, an amplified voice was shouting. The exact words were muffled, but they got the gist well enough. Ham-actor to the core, all exaggerated tone and slow, dramatic diction.

The gate on the other side of the arena ground open and a tremendous cheer rang out. Rey gave Finn a look. “We can talk about _aesthetics_ on the other side. Let’s focus on staying in one piece for now.”


	6. Chapter 6

Poe wasn’t happy about this. Not in the least bit. He’d been reduced (elevated? Shunted sideways? It definitely felt like reduced to him) by events to Mission Control. He understood the rationale, of course – the First Order and the local guards were on high alert, so no way could the destroyer of Starkiller Base, who’d been processed as a prisoner once before – he flinched at the memory – go out clandestine business in the city with any hope of success. Nor for that matter could Chewie.

The women on the crew were a different matter. The First Order had taken Rose prisoner before, but for once they had opted to execute first and do the paperwork later. Testor wasn’t known to them to any great degree, and Ki’rii wasn’t even a speck on their radar. Bogatt Silay’s network of contacts and treasure trove of resources would undoubtedly help with that; Poe hadn’t been exaggerating how impressed he was with their disguises.

And he knew that if they pulled this off, Leia or Admiral Calrissian or whoever debriefed them would tell him that this was an invaluable learning experience. _A situation where I absolutely can’t jump in an X-Wing and blow something up_.

But he still wasn’t at all pleased with this, sitting still. He was already borrowing Rey’s heavier weights, having found that Finn’s were too hefty for him and eventually, grudgingly conceded defeat. He’d also accepted Chewbacca’s invitation to the Dejarik table, and there too he’d had to concede defeat several times.

That had become his routine, along with the ever-necessary maintenance of the Falcon, feeding Gial the Porg and communicating with Silay and the girls – no, the women, he corrected himself. He had to start sounding more like a commander.

And watching the holonet. The Coliseum’s adverts had been a steady drip-feed for a couple of days now, teasing the arrival of two hated enemies of the First Order and, more importantly in the winking tone of the announcers, exciting new combatants for the arena.

There was more – promises of exotic beasts for the gladiators to face. Just as Silay had said, it looked like Comaudus was intent on holding a grand weekend of bloodshed.

The radio crackled as Poe adjusted the screen in the Falcon’s hold. When he had it optimised – it seemed to need doing every time you changed a channel – he made contact with Rose.

“Liutenant Tico, how are we doing up there? Got a visual on-” Chewbacca sat down next to him, offering a flask of caff to him and Suralinda. Hallis only took tea. “Yes please, Chewie. Anyway, got a visual?”

“Nothing yet, but we’re-”

Gial jumped onto Poe’s knee, squawking. “Sorry Rose, the Porg says hi.” An electronic mewl came from around Hallis’ ankles. “As does BB-8.”

Rose laughed a little. “Give them our love. Anyway, we’re in a good spot.” She didn’t fully disguise her worried tone, but Poe thought it would do more harm than good to mention it.

“And we’re about to start scoping the lower levels now,” Kazuda reported. As with so many places of its kind, the coliseum’s security was most lax when there was a fight on – though never truly lax.

“Good stuff,” Poe said, forcing a confident tone. Then they settled in to watch the show.

Rose was doing the same, her bets placed. Silay had advised them to make bets and given them credits with which to do so. If you were to pass as one of the aristocracy here, it seemed, you couldn’t simply turn up to watch people fight and die. Oh no, you had to gamble on who lived and died as well, throwing around the kind of money that would’ve fed her family for a year or more back home.

And, grisliest of all, watching victims of the First Order fight to please the people who'd taken everything from them. The gladiators they'd seen so far weren't Resistance, but they were all people who'd put up a fight when the First Order came along and announced that this world belonged to them now. They'd lost their worlds, friends and families, but because they'd been taken alive, their ordeal hadn't ended there.

Their death sentence was a strange sort of indefinite, with the only question being when and by what means. In that they weren't so different to the billions of slaves kept by the First Order, except they were made to fight against beasts and worse, other gladiators. Piling misery upon misery, until one fight went against them.

“This place is worse than Canto Bight,” she muttered to Jess.

“True, but don’t let that show.” The words came out jarringly cheerful – Jess had already keyed into the right tone, and to a passerby her voice sounded just as it should. Rose chided herself inwardly and tried to do the same.

“Gotcha. Say, how are the refreshments?” Low on alcohol, of course, but these were still pricier than anything she’d imagined as a child due to the exotic ingredients.

“Delicious,” Jess replied. She’d committed fully to the part, reclining and enjoying the looks she was getting from some of the men in the audience. In the same languid voice she said, “I’m seeing a couple of passages down in the shadows, what look like three concealed staircases.”

“There’s a guard or two by each,” Ki’rii added. “Trying not to look obvious. I guess there are switches for those. Shall I go and scope ‘em?”

“Wait until the fighting starts properly,” Rose said, glancing down at her “valette”. “Then, yes.”

Her eyes were drawn up by a swell of noise in the crowd around her, quickly building to a roar and applause.

The Coliseum reared above them, another ten rows of finely dressed spectators. And above those, the plush boxes and booths for the very richest and most important. There would be captains, commodores and majors up there, perhaps even a general or too. In pride of place, Rose could see the Governor’s booth, fronted with armourglass no doubt.

“And now, ladies and gentleman!” Boomed the ringmaster, up on a repulsorlift platform which allowed him to soar out over the arena. He was dressed as gaudily as anyone else, clad in a long red coat and flourishing a whip with every utterance, playing to the cameras which flocked around him. “Oh our very finest citizens, you honour us greatly with your patronage – most of all our distinguished and wise Governor Comaudus, hail to thee sir!”

Applause filled the space, though Rose couldn’t help but think it seemed rather obligatory.

The ringmaster seemed to notice. “But you are not here to be hailed, you come today to be entertained! So let us commence – in the one corner, the inveterate saboteur Ngoyik Lasp. In the other, feral and thirsting for gore we bring a rarity indeed; a bloodpelt Nexu! I trust your bets are all placed, because neither looks like tarrying…”

So the bloodshed began. A crimson-furred felinid creature was set on a Devorian, who was armed with a long trident. It started cagily, both of them circling slowly and giving Ki'irii her chance to go looking around the bottom of the stands. But after a few minutes the Nexu had got around Lasp’s defence and after that, the fight was largely over.

To his credit, Lasp kept up a spirited fight, bellowing and struggling and punching until the Nexu had emptied his ribcage across the arena floor.

Next to her, the returning Ki’rii said something to the effect of “ _Grurh_.” Nausea was rather difficult to gauge with someone whose complexion was blue, but in this case she looked very close to throwing up.

“Yup,” Rose said, putting a hand on Ki’rii’s and hoping their discomfort wasn’t too visible. It shouldn’t be, she suspected – quite a few people were looking rather queasy at that.

A spotlight again illuminated the ringmaster’s platform as it swept out over the stained sands. “Darling, precious audience, tonight you have drunk deeply of exquisite bloodshed, but I wager that you are not yet wholly sated, are you?” He spread his arms, grinning broadly, and Rose felt sick to her stomach. “For our promise to you of a spectacle better than any thus far today is yet to be fulfilled – but here it comes now! The event you’ve all been awaiting, the mystery box you’ve been waiting to see opened and to glimpse the delights within! Now you shall have it! For tonight we bring for your delectation _and_ delight, the _very embodiment_ _of_ _infamy_ …”

“Here they come!” Jess shouted, getting up and clapping. After a moment’s hesitation Rose and Ki’rii did the same, and that got them their first look at Rey and Finn.

They looked like young gods, resplendent in shining armour. They themselves shimmered too, with every centicubit of bare skin oiled so it glistened in the light of the fires. A great deal of bare skin in Finn’s case.

He looked good, no question about that. Rose would be lying if she claimed that her heart hadn’t just sped up a fair bit. Then again, part of that was also down to seeing her partner’s vitals exposed to any blade that might come his way.

Apparently Jess was ready to appreciate the aesthetics, though. "Holy nova," she murmured. "Rose, I knew you were a lucky gal, but _damn_. Same goes for Rey. We oughta get some pictures."

"Didn't know you wanted Rey as a pin up," Rose said with a raised eyebrow.

Jess had already pulled out her camera. "I was thinking of Connix. Reckon I'd make enough dough to buy my own cruiser, selling these to Kaydel."

"You're appalling."

“Well look, someone's gotta appreciate those two looking this good. Not sure either Rey or Finn do.”


	7. Chapter 7

Indeed they weren't. Quite aside from the worries of impending combat, Rey found herself bombarded with whistles and the kind of leering calls that no one would have uttered if they were down here with her. Not without getting a sharp blow to the head in return.

And above it all was the ringmaster’s proclamations. “Behold them, ladies and gentlemen! Infamy, infamy indeed, for where there ever two more ignoble wretches in the Galaxy?” A spotlight stabbed down and found Finn. “With your own two eyes you see the turncoat Stormtrooper, F N Two-One-Eight-Seven! Butcher of his own valiant comrades, despoiler of Canto Bight! But wait, there is more…”

A spotlight caught Rey, and she flinched a little at the clamour which greeted her. “Savour this, ladies and gentleman, for we have here tonight that rarest and deadliest of vile breeds, one of a kind indeed – I give you, _the Last Jedi!_ The harlot assassin of our wise, beloved Supreme Leader Snoke by low and loathsome treachery! Most deceitful, most despicable – revile her, ladies and gentleman!”

The whip was waved again, and the hollering and cheering went up with unprecedented vigour. “Yes, my good ladies and gentlemen, revile them! These _freedom fighters_ whose puerile ideology stands for nothing but the otherthrow of rightful authority and the rule of the mob!” The crowd didn’t hold back.

The ringmaster held his hands out, gleefully conducting the cacophony. “He who most loves the First Order will surely applaud loudest to see them here, abasing themselves for your pleasure, condemned to die that you may revel in their blood and gore as it paints our fair sands!”

“Well this is delightful,” the Regicide grumbled.

“Grosser than Canto. Well,” Finn pulled the Acklay helmet on to his head. “Let’s give ‘em a show.” He stormed out into the arena and let fly with a series of colourful insults at the upper levels, brandishing his sword. “Which of you wants this, huh? Why don’t you come down and get in the ring?”

Leaving Finn and the audience to their slanging match, Rey set the Terentatek helm on her own head and drew her axe, scanning the arena. She spied Rose, Jess and a young Twi’lek in the stands and had to suppress the urge to wave. But it gave them hope. Their friends were up there, no doubt scoping ways to get them out.

And come to think of it, she was in the mood to return some of the insults as well. “Come on!” she yelled, eyes on the well-to-do in their cushioned seats. “You loved Snoke so much, why don’t you come down and avenge him yourselves?” The shouts from high up went on unabated, but the lower stands had gone very quiet.

“Oh, so no one’s keen?” Finn called, grinning broadly now. “What’s wrong with you people? Can’t find the guts to face us?” He brandished his sword. “’cause we can help with that too!”

It wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good line, but Rey chuckled appreciatively.

“Enough of this foolishness!” cried the ringmaster. “You ingrates are here to die, not jest, so now face your opponents!”

Drums began thundering around the arena, and the pandemonium of jeers gradually died down.

Without a word, they went back-to-back, boots scuffing the sand as they went.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure you would agree that such an occasion calls for a confrontation… a cut above our usual fare. Such specimens as these warrant something altogether more _formidable_ , would you not say? So behold!”

A scraping, grating noise sounded beneath their feet. Portions of the arena floor slid away – four of them – and through the gaps, ghastly howls emanated, growing louder.

“A dread, magnificent creation of the ancient Sith, their ravening hounds, the tireless guardians of their dark tombs! You have seen the Tuk’ata here before, you’ve seen their strength and speed and _ravenous_ killer instinct – but now see them _perfected!_ ”

_What does that mean?_ Rey wondered, as clanking and growling haulers brought the unseen Tuk’ata up to the arena floor. Then they emerged into the firelight, and she wished she hadn’t asked.

She’d read about Tut’aka – “Sith Hounds” they were called, though they seemed closer to reptiles from her understanding. But these were marked as much by metal as scaly skin. The beasts were cyborgs, with whole limbs and jaws removed and replaced with bionic components. Thick ropes of saliva hung from metal fangs, and coils of wiring and tubes snaked behind the horned heads of the creatures. Neuro-impulsors and chemical stimulants, Rey guessed.

Restraints locked the Tuk’ata to their platforms, and the creatures strained against them. Their movements had an erratic, jerky quality that suggested the implants caused them pain – caused it deliberately. These weren’t predators any more, prowling and looking for an angle. These had been turned into biomechanical weapons, designed to kill and nothing else.

“Seen anything like these before?” Rey asked.

“Only in sims and primers.” Finn’s boots dug little furrows in the sand. He activated his sword's plasma filaments, igniting a fierce blue burn at the blade's edges, and Rey did the same with her axe. “And definitely not modded like this.”

It was foul, Rey thought. These creatures might have been bred for savagery, but they didn’t have the capacity for real malevolence. The gamesmakers of the arena had mutilated them, body and mind, solely for better sport.

“The stage is set!” boomed the ringmaster. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m with the Tuk’ata – let’s not delay!” The whip cracked once again. “ _Begin the bloodshed!_ ”

The fight began explosively. Finn and Rey dived to either side as the Tuk’ata leapt at them, rolling aside from the claws and lashing tails. Rey hammered her axe into the side of one with a crunch and a fizz of energy. The beast yowled as she ripped it away with a gruesome sucking noise, only to go reeling backways as another of the creatures came at her. She slammed her shield into its face, withdrew, trying to get a sense of the fight.

Finn was on his feet and facing the other two creatures, but there was no time to coordinate or even shout. One of the Tuk’ata lunged and was thrown back but, as its fellow lashed at Finn, leapt again.

Rey reacted on instinct. She thrust with her axe hand and one of her attackers was hurled across the arena, colliding messily with the one leaping at Finn. They smacked down on the sand in a tangle of limbs, snapping and screaming at one another.

Rey didn’t see it. The other Tuk’ata sprang for her and though she lodged her shield in its jaws, the force of the attack drove her to her knees. She let the shield go, pivoting away so the creature’s own momentum bore it face first into the sand. Then, two-handed, she brought the axe down on its spine, shearing through flesh and bone.

A roar went up from the audience, a great baying and caterwhauling. Rose, Ki’rii and Jess all exchanged queasy looks.

The dying Tuk’ata spasmed weakly as Rey retrieved her axe and shield. No time to recover – lobbing one beast at the other had bought Finn a few seconds, but now all three of the remaining beasts were on him. He sidestepped one and carved its flank open with his sword, but then there was the next to dodge, and the third raked its claws across his chest.

Rey sprinted, vaulting the fallen beast. She flung her axe end over end to sink into the side of one of the beasts, seeing it recoil. Finn turned back to his first, wounded attacker and beheaded it with a heavy stroke. Blood coursed onto the sand, to another delighted uproar.

Rey reached Finn in the moment that the fourth Tuk’ata came for him. Her attack wasn’t elegant or finessed, but it had all her momentum behind it and was delivered through the pointed base of her shield, straight into the side of the creature’s skull. She felt bone shatter, and struck again before the Tuk’ata could recover.

“Rey!”

She whirled and pounded the shield into the face of the other beast. Adamantium claws slashed the air millimetres from her face. Finn leapt in and plunged his sword into the chest of the first, and an awful howl rang from its jaws.

Rey didn’t spare it a glance, but struck the Tuk’ata again with her shield and spun away when it swung a claw at her. She reached out with her free hand and her still crackling axe tore free from its side, causing the beast to spasm again with pain. It lunged again – she caught the axe, twisted and buried it in the Tuk'ata's head.

It ended with the creature collapsing, twitching feebly, and the adulation of the crowd. To Rey it sounded like the sea on Ach-To, elemental and pitiless. Rage beat through her, along with disgust at the bloodlust she had fed.

“That enough entertainment for you?” she snarled up at them. “Huh? Bastards!”

Up on his platform, the ringmaster laughed. “Still so defiant – and a good thing too, ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure you’ll agree! The secret’s out, and we will have our champions here again tomorrow, ready to show you just what they’re capable of! And fear not, justice will be served to these wretches, one way or another. Adieu, rebel scum!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone can get me a recording of Daisy Ridley shouting "bastards!" I'll be forever in your debt.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, there's nudity in this one but there's no detail, so I think it gets to keep the Teen rating. Just assume the "camera" remains at shoulder height.

Rey was tired enough when they were dragged back to the cells that she just shrugged off her armour upon entering and didn't spare a backward glance for the attendants who took it away. Salisk had seen the looks on her and Finn’s faces, and left them in peace.

Once she heard the bolts grinding back into place, she moved to the back of the cell and through to her shower, shedding the last of her garments.

This degree of exposure, being somewhere unfamiliar even if it was enclosed, was new and distinctly unpleasant. For as long as she could remember, being naked had been intrinsically linked with vulnerability in her mind. But the oil, grime and sand weren't going to be shifted any other way.

The jet of water was immediately near-scalding, but Rey found she welcomed it. Such scouring pressure and heat only felt right when she was so filthy – of course the sand had contrived to get _behind her ears_ , she inwardly groaned.

This was also when being oiled up prior to fighting really bit you on the arse. Everything, every speck of dirt, stuck. And there was blood too, the blood of the mutilated and augmented beasts they had killed out there. By the time the Tut’aka were loosed on them, killing them was the kindest option going, but Rey felt befouled by the deed nonetheless.

Still, the only thing to do was wash it off.

As she lathered herself and the first layers of filth came away, her thoughts turned inwards. She felt the darkness in her, shifting and coiling like a serpent in her chest. It preyed upon her emotions. She was angry and frightened, ready to lash out at just about anything which wasn’t Finn. She told herself that the others were out there, knew where they were and would undoubtedly be plotting some way to rescue them. Still, her old loner’s pride bristled at that, and this feeling of helplessness was truly hateful.

Perhaps her nemesis had felt it. In the weeks after Crait, Rey begun to feel occasional surges of emotion from Kylo Ren through what was left of their Force Bond. It wasn’t the clarity which Snoke’s work had created previously, rather a vivid but fleeting impression every time. Violence seemed to carry across more easily than anything else, and surely it could flow in either direction.

That was its own grim thought: even her feelings were no longer wholly private.

She heard another rush of water through the wall to her left, and it broke the hush of her introspection. Finn's shower. There was a small gap in the stone around head height, a little larger than her fist.

“If you look,” she started.

Finn laughed. “Wouldn't dream of it. You're my friend, Rey. I respect your privacy, _and_ I wouldn't be able to look my girlfriend in the eye after we get out if I watched you in the shower.”

He tried to keep the levity in his voice, but he didn't quite manage it.

“You miss Rose, don't you?” She softened her tone, regretting her earlier snippishness.

“Yeah. And I'm scared for her and the others too, but more than that…”

Rey worked shampoo into her bedraggled and matted hair. “I'm listening.”

“This whole thing, being with her. It feels _great_ , but it also scares me. These feelings, this intensity.” He hissed with pain, and Rey guessed he was cleaning the cuts on his chest. “I wasn't programmed to feel that strongly about anyone except the Supreme Leader.”

Snoke’s withered and mutilated face flashed behind Rey's eyes and she grimaced. Then Ren's, and she shuddered at that.

“You’re good together,” she said. She’d thought that ever since their escape from Ren, when she saw the way Finn tended to Rose. “I’m glad you found her.”

“Thanks. And how about you, Rey? Anyone you think you might-”

“No.”

She’d known he was about to say that. Well-meaning, _I want everyone to have the same joy as me_ sentiments pretty much radiated from Finn at the moment. However, she didn’t know how to parry a question like this elegantly.

Finn gave a faint snort. “You spoke way too quickly for that to be true, Rey. And besides, I’m not blind. I've seen the way you look at her when we're on base.”

“Don’t know _what_ you me-”

“Lieutenant Connix, Kaydel Ko. Rey,” he said gently, “we all know. We keep seeing you looking at her all wistful, and the way you both start to get close when you let you guard down.”

“Git. You’re too observant.” Rey put her head against the cool stone wall, trying to banish the memory of those deep, dark brown eyes. But it was useless. Whenever she closed her eyes, Kaydel was there.

More and more, she wondered just what kind of box she’d opened when she opened her mind to the girl from Mission Control. The physical attraction wasn’t a surprise; she’d known from an early age that she liked women. Jakku had, if nothing else, given her plenty of time in which to think about that sort of thing.

But there was something else with Kaydel, a _pull_ at Rey’s heart whenever she got near her. One that told her to grab the girl and kiss her, but which she recoiled from every time she got too close.

Her frustration tipped easily into anger. She shook her head and focused on scrubbing, but Finn carried on.

“I can see the appeal, Rey. She’s pretty, she’s smart…”

“Don’t go there.”

There was a pause. “Why?”

She swallowed. “Because I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I… kriff. Look, I like her, but I don't know how I can expose myself like that-” _ho ho_ , she glumly thought “-after what happened above Crait.”

She could almost picture Finn’s hand against the wall, his bowed head. “You mean Ren?”

A reluctant sigh escaped her lips. “Yeah.”

They hadn’t talked about this yet. Sure, they’d talked on Ryloth about what had happened with Luke and the broad strokes of the confrontation in the throne room. But there were things she had held back.

“He got under my skin,” she whispered. “I thought I was a stone wall on the outside and fire within. I was still seeing him put his sword through Han’s chest whenever my eyes closed, and _yet_. He made me feel… sympathy for him.”

“Really? I mean, don’t wanna sound peevish, but…”

“But he’d maimed you less than a week before. Please don't think I've forgotten that.” She rubbed her forehead. “I was more vulnerable than I recognised, but that’s not the point. What matters is that he knew just how to play me. It wasn’t all a show, but Ben, Ren – call him what you like, he knew how to use his own weakness. He turned it into a lure.”

“That’s the Dark Side, I guess. You were dropped straight into that. _How the hell did sand get there?_ ” he muttered.

“You know what they say, it gets everywhere.”

“Ain’t that a fact.” Then he raised his voice again. “Sorry. So you’re saying…” and it was easy to picture the frown as understanding warred with distinct disapproval on his face. “You were attracted to him?”

“I don’t know what I felt. Really, Finn. Except that on that island, he seemed like the only person who understood how it felt to be like this, tied to something so much bigger than myself and not knowing who I really was.”

This had also come during her brief, fraught apprenticeship to Luke, the master she hadn’t fully understood until it was too late. There too, Ren had sensed an opening and gone for it with predatory intent.

“I thought he was there, ready to be rescued. And honestly, when Snoke was dead and the fight in the throne room was over, had he given the order to stop firing on our ships I can’t say for sure what would have happened.”

“But instead…”

“He misjudged me, and then he let the mask slip. And I saw it all, finally saw the whole of him…”

The darkness which Luke had seen, which had made Ben Solo believe the very worst of his uncle and turn upon his fellow apprentices. And then she’d understood that whatever damage he carried, when the chance came to finally make his own choices, he would take the Galaxy for himself and not care how many necks he trod on. Playing on her own kicked-dog anger and dejectedness, using her ruthlessly...

So she’d run to the side of her real friends. Finn, Chewie, Leia and the rest. The Resistance was more than ready to give her a place at their side.

“But he had me _this close_.” She looked at the gesture she was making, despite Finn being on the other side of the wall, and let her hand drop in irritation. “It would have been so easy to take his hand, and damn everyone else. I was manipulated and it so nearly worked. And I don’t know how to get past that yet.”

“You’ll get there.”

Rey shut off the water and stood for a moment, feeling it run off her skin. “Maybe. I don’t know when, though. Even if, yes, Kaydel seems less prone to using people than Ren.”

“Leave it for now, perhaps.” Finn’s voice was muffled. He must’ve gone for his towel. “We can grapple with this when we’re back on base, and no one’s going to try and kill us. Deal?”

Rey sighed, and smiled. “Deal. And thank you, Finn.”

She dried herself off, pulled her chiffon back on and ate the meal which was pushed under the bars of her cell. Then she keeled over on her bed – only to hear a _psst_ from Finn.

“Found this under my pillow.” A note slid through the bars, and she hastened over to it.

A rather scribbled note, it turned out. _Fellow rebels. Sorry we lost you yesterday, glad you made it through alive. We’ve linked up with Silay & are working on busting you out, just need another day or so. Will make contact proper tomorrow night, so stay in 1 piece til then. No one’s forgetting you._


	9. Chapter 9

“So,” Jess began. “That was grim. You OK, Rose?”

Rose, her jaw carefully set, nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak right now, watching Finn and Rey be led away, for fear of shouting out and blowing their cover. But it was a struggle seeing them disappear into the dark, Finn’s chest still bleeding where the Tuk’ata had slashed him.

Similarly, it was really hard not to turn around and thump the braying idiot behind them who was gleefully listing the ways Finn and Rey might actually die tomorrow. Or the socialite who thought a fighting death was “too good for that breed of scum. They should stake them down on the sand and flense them. A slower show to be sure, but for the sophisticated viewer it has a rather delicious quality.”

This really was worse than Canto Bight.

“Hey pal.” Jess squeezed her arm. “They’re alive.”

“Kazuda says he’s out,” Ki’rii reported quietly. “They’re done scoping, so I for one suggest we get out of here.”

“We’ve still got more,” Jess said. “Believe me, I don’t want to, but leaving early might draw attention.”

Ki’rii gave her a look. “Then I’m gonna make for the bar and do a quick scope of those ladders. What am I getting you girls?”

“Something strong.”

Comaudus sat back and sipped at his drink, before reaching for a platter of small delicacies and tucking into one. Around him, friends – if anyone else in the ruling class of Magna Leptus merited the trust to be called a friend – and members of his family lounged, or got up to avail themselves of refreshments.

All of them were sure to praise the fight they had just witnessed – a typical courtesy, but with complete sincerity. The combination of the Rebels on the sands – “so delightfully clad!” they said – and those monsters was quite inspired. “Visceral,” they all called it.

“So,” he said to his aide, calling the man over. “Do you still think we should have handed them straight to the Supreme Leader?”

The man hid his disquiet. “I defer to your judgement, sir.”

“Just so. Our accounts are looking immensely healthier already, and this is just the start. The mystery box is open and our audience will be clambering over each other to get tickets. The betting will be delirious.” He took another gulp of liquor. “Stars, I’ll wager that our takings from the matches will actually exceed the bounties on both their heads.”

“The Supreme Leader may wish them… preserved, nonetheless.”

Comaudus shrugged. “The bounty notice said ‘dead or alive’. I follow it to the letter.”

“I might venture,” one of his staff said, “it might make a better show for us to be seen obeying the spirit of the Supreme Leader’s dictat.”

“I see your point but – and I’m sure that none of you will repeat this to anyone else – I do not pose a sufficient threat to the Supreme Leader that I couldn’t get away with presenting their corpses to him. I'm merely a selfish man looking to enrich himself. For that matter, if one or both of our prizes are damaged and if he is displeased, our lord and master will still be wise enough to recognise the service that he has been rendered and stay his hand.”

“And on that matter, Governor, we have had a message of acknowledgement to your report of the prisoners’ capture. Two Knights of Ren are hastening to Magna Leptus.”

“I trust this shall not interfere with our timeline?”

“Not at all, sir. We will have three days, as you anticipated.”

“Excellent.” Comaudus sat up a little, dismissing his servants with a gesture. The next act was beginning, and it promised to be almost as good a show as the Jedi and the Traitor had just provided.

The Star Destroyer _Punitive_ broke from orbit over Nakadia and keyed its engines for the jump to hyperspace. Aboard the mighty ship, an adjutant went to a strategium chamber. Upon laying eyes on the two black-clad figures within, he swallowed and spoke haltingly.

“Lord, Lady…”

Yimur and Gwaelyn Ren turned slowly to regard him through the obsidian lenses of their masks. “Are we underway?” Yimur growled.

“Imminently, Lord. The course is set for Magna Leptus. The captain anticipates us being there within two days.”

“Tolerable.” He turned back to the screen, watching again as the Jedi and the Traitor grappled messily with the enhanced Tut’aka.

Gwaelyn watched the retreating adjutant, turning back to her fellow when the door had closed behind him. “Not elegant by any measure.”

“I can scarcely imagine the warrior who could dispatch those creatures elegantly. At least not with unfamiliar weapons and armour.” He rested his hand on the pommel of his vibrosword, once the hilt of his lightsaber as a Jedi Padawan. “You with your glaive, I’m sure you could have cut the Tuk’ata to ribbons, but without it?”

Gwaelyn said nothing.

Yimur took her silence for acquiescence. “These two here… they acquitted themselves respectably, considering the circumstances.”

Gwaelyn tilted her head slightly, watching the girl wrench her axe from a Tut’aka’s flesh with the Force. “There is some inventiveness there. A certain strength of spirit. I think I understand what Kylo sees in her.”

“And what of him?” Yimur nodded to the Traitor. “There’s more than just skill at play, though he’s plainly good with the weapon. That’s the touch of the Force there. I wonder if he even notices it.”

“That would explain how he wounded our master and did Phasma in. Worthy opponents, both. It’s rather irrelevant, however,” she added as the sequence ended, “if they’re simply to be handed to us in chains.”

“Do I detect a trace of disappointment, Gwaelyn? Fear not. I’m sure our master will have them give us good sport before the end.”


	10. Chapter 10

There was an expectant air in the arena this time, when Rey and Finn stepped out into the light of the torches.

“Today, ladies and gentlemen,” the ringmaster yelled. “We present a new challenge for our Resistance contenders. For killing beasts is one thing, a merely physical struggle. But to contend with another warrior… what does that reveal in a combatant? When it’s your life or theirs, what does that do to you?” Rey looked uneasily upwards, seeing him spread his arms wide. “I don’t know, but that’s why we’re up here and they’re down there! Join me, please, in welcoming their opponents!”

The gates opposite grated open, revealing two imposing, armoured silhouettes. One of them had glowing eyes, fierce orange blazing in the dark. When the duo stepped forward, the firelight gleamed on burnished metal.

Rey heard a fierce intake of breath from Finn. “War droid.”

No mistaking that. The droid’s head was a stylised heavy helmet, tipped with a stinger-shaped crest. It – he? – was broad and heavily plated, a brutal mace held in metal fingers. He was heavily armoured, his metal skin the colour of lead and chased with brass.

The other gladiator, a Zabrak, looked no less formidable. A spiked pauldron lay over one shoulder, but the other arm was bare, exposing a bicep the size of Rey’s head. Patterns of yellow and black crisscrossed his skin, even the scalp around his horns. He bore a curved vibrosword, its plasma filament already snarling.

The crowd hollered and roared. These two were clearly favourites.

“You know them well! The last survivors of the Revakeim Holdfast, taken by the First Order and given to us for your delight. And in the eleven years we have hosted them here, what grand delights they have bestowed upon us!”

Rey looked into the eyes of the Zabrak and saw only smouldering rage, the anger of a prisoner who had for years known nothing but captivity and bloodshed. Those of the droid were a fiery orange, like a furnace.

“Cherished ladies and gentlemen, welcome as you always do the Iron Slayer and the Butcher in Yellow!”

The air shook from the cheer.

Finn looked at her uneasily. “The hell do we do with these two?” They’d been enemies to the First Order. Neither of them wanted that blood on their hands.

She gritted her teeth. “Let’s just focus on not getting killed. I think everything is secondary right now.”

Meanwhile, Ki’rii and Kazuda were working their way further into the tunnels. Ki’rii found herself started by the sheer volume of the passages. They were almost as capacious as the cruisers she’d worked aboard.

“So if a fight broke out in here,” she mused. “It wouldn’t be far off a boarding action.”

“What’s a blackthumb doing in boarding actions?” came a gruff voice from up ahead. A man left the shadows by a doorway, revealing dark skin and shaggy, grey-streaked hair and beard. “Shouldn’t you be hiding behind a pipe?”

“Well, you know the kinds of brigands that are out there beyond Mid Rim,” she carried on, keeping her voice level. “’til the First Order can be everywhere, everyone on a ship’s gotta be able to fight.”

“Fair. Soon enough the Legions will burn those scum from the Galaxy, and we’ll have some of them as guests in the cells here.” His smile lost its callous edge, and he put a hand to an amulet around his neck. A quick twist or flick, and the Resistance symbol glinted for a second. “He chose her well,” he told Kazuda.

Kazuda grinned. “Only the best for this job. Which apparently doesn’t just mean us now.”

Under the shaggy hair, the man’s forehead creased in a reproachful frown. “Careful, boy. Anyway,” he approached Ki’rii and offered a calloused hand. “Jarek Yeager, fellow mechanic.” She recognised the name. One of Kazuda’s team, already on the inside. There was another in the control room – a kid called Neeku Vozo.

Privately, Ki’rii found it reassuring to see Yeager and get some confirmation that there were some grown-ups on the team. Up till now, Ace Squadron had seemed like they should be in school instead of behind enemy lines.

She shook the proffered hand. “Ki’rii Volo.”

“Got your accreditation, new blood?”

“Here.”

“ _A Crait survivor?_ ” he whispered, looking at her with new respect. Ki’rii raised her chin a little at that because yes, it did mean quite a bit to her that she’d made it through that trial. Yeager resumed his act. “Hmm… all seems right.”

Silay had advised her that she’d need to play this part throughout her time down in the complex. Just because they’d got her accreditation and a uniform which both passed muster, that didn’t mean the guards wouldn’t pick up on anything suspicious.

So Ki’rii stayed rigorously in character as they made their way through the passages, taking in the control chambers and armouries. The places which, Yeager said, absolutely had to be guarded against any gladiator who might get loose. It happened occasionally, it seemed, and the guards dealt with it by piling on the escapee before they could do any damage.

The garrison was extensive, and there’d be more guards in the arena proper, not to mention the governor’s own retainers. “Which is why the armouries would be essential for any real uprising… and why the bosses have proper blast doors put in to stop the scum reaching them.”

An ugly laugh came from further down the passage. Kazuda stiffened, ever so slightly as she saw a bulky guard lumber into view, flanked by two of his fellows. “The scum in here would need damn good friends to get past all this. They learn soon enough that down here, they ain’t got any, and we’re happy to give out a good thrashing.” He stepped closer, looking down his nose at Ki’rii. “So they’re putting more blueys in, eh?”

Ki’rii tried not to react to the slur, but her cheek twitched.

“Yeah, that’s good, shortstack. Remember your place. We’ve had plenty of new ones in lately, but you’ll remember your place. Now, I’ve gotta fight to watch.” His grin showed bad teeth. “Time to see that little Jedi tart get carved open.”

“What a brute,” Ki’rii muttered when the door had clamped shut behind them.

“Yeah,” breathed Kazuda. “Be good to bust this place open when the time comes.”

Drums rang out above them. Ki’rii clenched her fist, putting a thumb over her ring which concealed the Resistance symbol. _Let them come through this. We can’t afford to lose them_.

“This is vile,” Rose muttered, far above in the stands. Not just because she felt powerless – and that itself was worse even than watching Finn’s suicide run on Crait – but because Rey and Finn were clearly being set against fighters who ought to be their allies.

Jess’s reply was swallowed up in the magnified bellow of “Commence!” and the surge of noise from the crowd. The first clashes rang through the din, all four combatants moving fast to attack before pulling back, prowling.

Finn and Rey had advanced, but did so cautiously. Their opponents did the same, each warrior gauging the abilities of their opponents, steadily raising the tempo and aggression. The ringing beat of their weapons became quicker, harsher.

The Zabrak and the droid were formidable, that much was already clear. Their movements had the precision and economy of practiced duellists, looking for an advantage and then taking it, cagily waiting rather than expose themselves.

But then it was as if a switch was thrown. The two gladiators bulled forward in the same instant, driving Finn off to the side and bearing down on Rey. It took only an instant for Finn to come back, lunging at the droid, but that second was all they needed.

Rey deflected the sword-thrust with her shield and cut back – but the Zabrak pulled back and then the droid was already swinging for her with his mace. She caught that with her axe – but Rose could see that she was too late to angle it properly.

The axe shattered with a burst of electricity. Rey went rolling across the sand.


	11. Chapter 11

Dark spots danced in front of Rey’s eyes. Had it not been for her connection to the Force, she wouldn’t have survived what happened next.

She hauled herself up to one knee as the Zabrak gladiator charged, caught the first blow on her shield, rolled aside from a haymaker swing. Lashed out at his thigh, staggering him and giving her time to regain her feet.

Clashes of metal told her Finn and the droid were still fighting, but she couldn’t even spare them a glance. The sword swung down again and she flung out her free arm, deflecting it with her vambrace. Praise be to Beskar.

She flung out a hand and with the Force, tore a spear from the hand of a guard. Its haft smacked into the back of the Zabrak’s head. She plucked it from the air and attacked immediately, three quick jabs at his chest before she pulled back and hammered the butt of the spear into his throat.

A pained wheeze issued from his mouth. Still the gladiator fought on, but his movements were slower, unsteady. She saw the next attack coming – a desperate swing which could split her clean in two – and twisted to one side, her leg snapping out to deliver a fierce kick to the back of his knee.

Her opponent rolled onto his back the second he hit the ground, and Rey had to veer away from the slash of his sword. But again, too slow. She darted in, planting her boot on the Zabrak’s chest and putting the spear tip to his throat.

One thrust could end this. Then she could move to help Finn. She only had to take this one life-

“Hold!” the droid blared. Rey started, both at the sudden noise and the concern in the gladiator’s synthesised voice. She turned her head to see him step back from Finn and cast his mace and shield to the ground. The hostile orange eyes became a soft blue. Finn glanced back at Rey for a second, eyes wide.

“LM…” gasped the Zabrak at Rey’s feet. “You know they don’t -”

“I’ll take the chance,” the droid told him. But his eyes were on Rey when he finished the sentence: “friend.” And he sank to his knees, head bowed and hands out. Finn shot Rey another look, sword still raised.

It was an old, well-known custom, the appeal to the highest authority in the arena to decide whether a gladiator lived or died. In the old days it would have been a king or lord of some sort. In this case it would be Comaudus.

For a moment there was a hush. Then the ringmaster called out.

“Cravens!” he jeered. “Is this how the last of the Revakheim warriors go down, throwing themselves on our mercy. Is that what you really want, dear audience?”

A derisive bellow rang out. The Zabrak’s eyes remained fixed on Rey, some strange emotion flickering in their depths.

“Other arenas may permit this kind of pantomime, but our sands are thirstier than that! And do we imagine, for even the merest fragment of a second, that wise Governor Comaudus would accede to such a cowardly appeal?”

Another cheer.

“I would not expect so either – but less us not put words in the mouth of our ruler, shall we? Esteemed Governor, what say you?”

The spotlight was turned upon Comaudus up in his booth, and his and Rey’s eyes met. Slowly, enjoying the moment, Comaudus arm and tilted his hand… thumbs down.

“There is the verdict! Ladies and gentlemen, see the price that is paid for cowardice. And now our victors claim their due. Spill the Zabrak’s blood, Jedi! Take your prize!”

The baying reached a new pitch, vibrating in Rey’s chest as they goaded her own, screamed out for her to kill.

“Arise, now, end them and arise! Watch now, ladies and gentlemen, watch and revel as a queen of the red sands ascends!”

And another voice in Rey’s head was urging her on as well. The Dark Side heard the thunder in her blood and roared its reply. A challenge and invitation both. _Didn’t this feel right? Wasn’t this the same anger she’d felt when she and Kylo Ren had duelled in the snow, the rage which would have seen her kill him?_

And then she heard his words. Maybe it was really Ren, maybe not, but it boomed in her head. _Do it, Rey. We both know it’s in you, Rey. Why deny it?_

But something drew her eyes upwards, and she saw Rose and Ki’rii in the stands. Saw the worry in Ki’rii’s eyes, and something different in Rose’s – a look that somehow, clearly told her that this wasn’t her. She was better than this.

Her eyes flicked to the droid, and back to the Zabrak. These two were victims of the First Order, more than she had ever been herself. They had thrown themselves on her mercy, and the ideals of the Jedi were more than clear on this matter.

And yet, she heard the ravening demands of the darkness.

Rey’s lips pulled back, the snarl distorting her features. She raised the spear, cried out and stabbed down -

\- into the sand by the Zabrak’s neck. Rey stepped away and turned to face the crowd, scanning until she finally found the eyes of the governor. Slowly, and quite deliberately, she raised her hand, thumb up.

Silence met her, before the ringmaster spoke again. “If a gladiator requires final peace and no opponent will grant it to him, we have a recourse. Corpse Taker, we have need of you!”

A slow, ponderous drumroll echoed through the arena. A gate opened, and through it strode a guard in bone-white armour and a black cape and hood. His mask was a silver skull, an ugly bone rictus. In his other hand was a toothed hammer of black iron.

The Corpse Taker was derived from some ancient religion, representing a god of the underworld. Arenas were fond of such figures, using them to finish off beaten gladiators who wouldn’t die quickly enough. Fittingly, when this one spoke, his voice was a croak that suggested rare use.

“Stand aside. The arena demands its due. Two deaths.”

“So it does.” But she didn’t move.

The hammer twitched. “You will not be moved?”

“No.”

The Corpse Taker didn’t speak again. He simply swung at her head, driving her back. Finn, however, was already surging forward. His first blow caught the hammer, the second knocked it down, and the third sent the Corpse Taker crumpling to the sand, headless.

The answering tumult shook the arena. “And the crowd goes wild,” Finn observed.

Rey didn’t answer him, but rather turned back to her opponent and held out a hand. “You at least ought to tell me your name.”

The Zabrak smiled and took her hand, though he didn’t need much help regaining his feet. “Nyzar. And my friend here, LM-376.”

The droid too came haphazardly to his feet. “Not that either of you need introducing, of course. But we do owe you our thanks.”

The ringmaster wasn’t finished yet, however. “Fine, fine! The arena has its due. Take your little victory, but don’t imagine for a second that this little plot twist of yours will be allowed to endure. Ladies and gentlemen, return tomorrow to see the rebels reap the just rewards of defiance!”


	12. Chapter 12

_Not the end I would have written myself for this clash_ , Comaudus thought. _But I see ample opportunities here, and I can’t begrudge them high drama such as this._

Several of the dignitaries around him were still silent, shell-shocked and aghast. The governor looked at them with amusement – at least he didn’t need to feign that. It would not do for him to look perturbed. He walked lazily back to his seat, twirling the flute of wine urbanely in his hand. “An interesting turn of events, one which raises the question of what ought to come next.”

The ringmaster paced behind his desk. “We can fold this into tomorrow’s performance easily enough, and put the cravens in with them.”

“You’re sure your new acquisition will do the job?”

“Easily. This is one of the most brutal specimens we’ve ever had. I’d be quite amazed if even the Jedi walks away from the coming fight. And as for the disappointments, well…” He reached for a glass of violet liquor. “Stand together, die together. I trust you approve of the message?”

“It seems pertinent.”

“Damn, they’re good,” Poe reflected happily. His heart was still thudding away in his chest. “So I suppose this makes your next step that bit easier?”

The flickering image of Silay inclined its head, a small smile playing over the old man’s features. “I think seeing their fellows spared should make the gladiators more receptive to our pitch. From that, we’ll have strength in numbers. Although,” he frowned, “it does mean putting our transports on show instead of merely taking off and scarpering as per the original plan.”

“We’ve got you covered on that front,” Suralinda put in. Hallis kept quiet – in any case she was concentrating at the Dejarik table, launching a fresh attack on Chewbacca’s critters.

The spymaster regarded her. “Not to besmirch the prowess of Black Squadron, but I do hope you’re referring to more than just yourselves.”

Poe nodded. “Just so. We’ve called in the cruiser _Rapscallion_. It’ll be on standby in-system in two days, with a full squadron of fighters and transports.”

Chewbacca made a rough _grah_ of an interjection.

Poe nodded. “True, timing will be tight, but we can make it work.”

“The trick,” Suralinda mused, “is gonna be making sure everyone’s eyes are on the arena. Reckon our teams are up to that?”

Silay smiled. “Oh, assuredly.”

Where the tumult in the arena had been a mix of adulation and condemnation, the gladiators down below were unanimous. Finn and Rey were met with a raucous swell of cheers and fists hammering on chests and bars.

“No one’s successfully invoked a reprieve in this place for a very long time,” Nyzar told, them following a little way behind.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” spat the guard with a hand on Rey’s shoulder. “The ringmaster won’t let this stand, and we’ve got something _really_ special lined up for the lot of you tomorrow.”

Nyzar laughed, a rough croak and rumble. “I’ll take that. Spitting in the governor’s eye once is more than you’ll ever manage.”

“In that bloody cell, now!” Nyzar and LM were thrust into cells opposite Rey and Finn’s.

Salisk watched with amusement. “Well, this is interesting,” he eventually remarked, as the guards retreated. “You’ve found some accomplices.”

Rey smiled. “And some supporters besides, which can’t hurt.”

“Comaudus won’t let this lie, you know,” LM grated from his cell.

A snort of acknowledgement and grim amusement came from Finn’s direction. “Never met a First Order officer who would, and those nerf-herders raised me. So we’re in for something nasty tomorrow?”

“Something big and nasty. The bestiary’s home to much bigger brutes than those Tuk’ata you two did in the other day.”

“But let’s not dwell on that,” Nyzar cut in. “’part from anything else, rather like to clean myself up.”

Later they all talked, speaking of things other than the fight to come tomorrow. Nyzar and LM-976 were hungry for news of the Galaxy and the ongoing struggle against the First Order, and in return they shared stories of their own. Mostly about the enemy’s seizure of their own world, even before the Resistance had formed.

Ruefully, Rey considered that the Galaxy should’ve taken Revakeim as a warning of what was to come. With the full strength of the Republic, Snoke and his regime could have been faced down. But that hope was long gone now. She forced herself not to dwell on it, instead asking about the two old gladiators’ experiences of the arena.

That turned out to be a grim tale all its own, with the grinding course of battles and the steady loss of friends and comrades, all to the bloodthirsty applause of the crowd and the profit of Governor Comaudus.

It was easier to talk of the Resistance’s activities after Crait, their dogged efforts to rebuild their strength after that narrow escape and the operations they’d begun to undertake more recently, striking back at the enemy.

“I trust they’ve gone better than this?” Nyzar asked, eyebrow raised.

Finn laughed softly. “Yup.”

“Good. Wouldn’t like to fall in with a mob who don’t know what they’re doing.”

Neither Rey nor Finn made much of that, but both of them felt encouraged. Some time after that, Rey drifted off to sleep, reflecting that there were many worse ways that they could have ended today.

When she awoke again, the cells were dark – but thanks for her connection to the Force, she knew immediately that someone was outside her door.

She came off the bed quickly, heart already beating hard as she moved warily towards her shadow of a guest. Another moment, and she recognised the presence.

“Ki’rii?” she hissed.

“Hi!” Ki’rii’s voice threatened to cease being a whisper. “Captains, it’s great to-”

Rose appeared at her side and immediately, she and Finn were kissing through the bars.

“Sooo…” Ki’rii said, laughing under her breath. “How’ve you been holding up?”

Rey smiled. “Staying sane, mostly. Missing our friends.” She gestured. “As you can see. How are Poe and the others doing?”

“Jess is good, Chewie and the other pilots seem to be holding up too, but Poe might be tearing his hair out a little bit.”

It was easy enough for Rey to imagine that. “I guess he’s grounded for the duration. Anyway… I do hope you’re here to tell us what you lot are up to?”

Ki’rii’s head bobbed rapidly. “Something like that. Speaking of that, I heard the clamour this afternoon. Sounds like you two have made yourselves pretty popular down here.”

“And you’re looking to exploit that, I’ll bet?”

“We’re going by Silay’s plans,” Ki’rii smiled.

Rey thought for a moment. “So this is where you’ve been since Ryloth? Working for Silay?”

“Pretty much. You’ll have to speak with him after we’re done, the old man’s got such a mind.”

“Finn and I are kind of counting on that. So, plan?”

“It’s gonna take one more day to get everything in place, but looking at the mood in here, we’ve plenty of accomplices for the taking. Leaving that, we’ve got a dozen people in uniform and Silay sorted us a bunch of charges. We’re laying ‘em tomorrow night, discreetly.”

“And you’re thinking of setting these off… when exactly?”

“Once you’re in the arena with your intended opponents.”

Finn and Rose finally broke off, breathing rapidly. “That sounds dicey,” Finn said.

Rose smiled ruefully. “Poe said the same, but we can get you up into the stands and it’s gonna be quicker to get out from there.”

Finn nodded. “Uh huh. Just be sure that we all know which exits to run for.”

Rey added, “Ki’rii, do me a favour. Start with my other neighbour, then the two opposite. And stay safe.”

“You too, Captain.”


	13. Chapter 13

“I’m learning,” Poe mused, “how it must feel for Leia.”

“How so?” asked Suralinda, rummaging in a cupboard as she sought some tinned fish for Gial. Hallis looked curious, but kept her own counsel. Chewie gave Poe a knowing look and nodded.

He stroked the stubble on his chin, trying to get the words right in his head. “This is something like how it’s been for her every time she sends a squadron or strike force out on a mission. She directs us, gets us prepared as best she can, but after a certain point it’s out of her hands. That’s how it is with Rey and Finn, even the others in the city.”

“So you’re making your peace with it?”

“That’s going a bit far. Hallis, we on soon?”

“Five minutes, they’re up next.” The girl sat back and gulped. “Stars, this one’s looking like a proper rumble.”

Hallis wasn’t wrong. A dozen gladiators were gathered by the gate. Rey, Finn, Nyzar and LM had been joined by Salisk and seven others. Accordingly, the guard presence had been increased, guns pointed right at the fighters.

The gladiators did their best to ignore them. “Honour to fight with you,” Salisk said to Rey and Finn, and the other gladiators nodded.

“Thanks,” Finn said, though the uneasy look didn’t quite leave his face. “What are they putting us all up against? A lot of critters, or one big one?”

“It’ll be one hefty beast,” Nyzar rumbled. “There’s been talk among the guards. Something scarce-seen and savage.”

The attendants approached with their weapons. This time, Rey was handed a long-bladed spear. “Well,” LM said as she tested its weight, “we know you can make a spear work for you.”

Rey spun it and locked into a combat pose, the same she favoured with her staff. “True enough. I’m glad we’ve got you with us, mind.”

A circular hole had opened up at the heart of the arena, ten metres across. Finn moved closer, sword held defensively in both hands, but no sooner had he reached the lip then the roar went up. It was a sound that went beyond the animalistic, the scrape of coarse rock against metal… but that wasn’t quite right either. There was something unmistakably organic about it, a wetness which spoke of drool as saliva as thick as cement and a hunger which all the flesh in this city would not sate.

Finn rocked back on his heels and retreated, falling into line as rumbling gears brought the creature to the surface. It stood well over five metres tall, a bronze mountain of armoured hide and bony spines. Horns crowned its head, and six jagged tusks framed a cavernous mouth of yellow fangs.

“Ladies and gentleman,” came the crowing voice from on high, “it is with great pride and tremendous excitement that we give you… _the Bull Rancor!_ ” The beast roared up at the platform and the man cackled with glee. “But perhaps we should let this one speak for himself! Loose the creature and let the slaughter commence!”

The restraints opened and the leviathan lumbered forward, clawed hands reaching out and flexing as its piggy red eyes glared at the little figures around it.

“We got a plan?” called Finn. The beast tensed.

“Aye!” yelled Nyzar. “Scatter!”

The Rancor charged.

Rose’s breath caught in her throat. Nothing so huge and bulky should move as quickly as that.

The band of fighters split in two, shying away from the surging bulk of the Rancor and its lashing claws. Deep gouges were torn in the sand where Rey and the Trandoshan had been standing. The beast roared loudly enough to rattle glasses in the stands, and an answering shout went up from the crowd.

The gladiators began to fight back, jabbing at the Rancor’s armoured flanks. Most of them had been given spears like Rey’s, and with the crackling blades they managed to open pinprick wounds in its armour.

It immediately became a vicious, improvised dance, each gladiator reacting to the moves of their comrades and their massive adversary. They kept it at bay, and its bellows of hungry frustration followed them across the sand. Constantly they struck back with a crack of metal on armoured skin, and soon dark rivulets of blood ran down the bronze scales.

The thing’s sheer bulk, however, made it difficult for Rey and her fellows to inflict any real damage. Certainly not before it wheeled to attack. Only Finn, seizing an opening that a blow from LM provided, opened the only deep wound – and almost paid with his life, dodging as the claws ripped the air just centimetres from his face.

The next blow came for one of the other gladiators, a Delphidian woman in a close-faced helmet. A whip-crack of the tail floored her and left her lying flat on the sand, winded. A claw rose and came down to skewer her, crush her into the floor.

Rey leapt in, her off-hand raised, and the claw stopped as it met an invisible barrier. She felt the weight of the attack and almost buckled under it, but she held on. The Rancor halted in dumb confusion for a second, giving the Delphidian time to regain her breath and roll away.

And giving Salisk his own opening. The Trandoshan leapt forward with his spear, a perfect thrust which put the weapon right through the Rancor’s eye. But there was no time for him to withdraw, and the evident pain didn’t slow the beast.

“No!” Finn and Rey cried in unison.

In the stands, Rose gasped. Claws punched through the Trandoshan’s chest, blood wetting the sand under him. The beast dropped him to the ground.

Something inside Rey snapped. She lifted a hand and threw all her pent-up anger at the Rancor. It froze, groaning and growling in protest as its jaws were wrenched open. Rey was screaming, and Rose just about made out Finn’s name over the beast’s roar.

Finn lunged forward, putting all his weight behind the sword, and stabbed upwards into the roof of the creature’s mouth.

The crowd fell silent, and for a few seconds the only sound in Rey's ears was the death rattle of the beast and her own ragged breathing. Then, with an ugly sucking noise, Finn dragged the blade free and the Rancor slumped to the ground.

Rey barely heard the cheer, and didn’t spare so much as a glance for the crowd. Instead she moved to the fallen Salisk, lying on a spreading patch of dark red. His breath came in bloody gasps and coughs.

“I think…” he hacked, bringing one hand to hover above the wound. “I think this one had my number on it, friend.”

“Don’t say that,” she told him. “You’re gonna live. We’ll get you patched up.”

He laughed painfully. “They don’t go that far for us. Just, promise me, Rey…” he gasped. “You’ll get them out.”

Rey blinked back tears, and took hold of his shoulder. “We will. And we’ll tear the heart out of this place when we do.”

“That’s a Jedi,” he laughed. And then his breathing stopped, his eyes going still and glassy.

Rey leaned over and closed his eyes. Then, shutting her own, she turned her powers upon the sand around them.

She heard a murmur from the fighters around her, echoed a moment later by the audience. She stood and opened her eyes. Salisk lay at the centre of the Resistance’s emblem, his head resting on that of the raptor.

Nyzar and LM bowed to the fallen gladiator, followed by their fellows. Rey and Finn bowed in turn. Then they turned and marched away, sparing not a single look for the ringmaster or the audience.

That night, in the depths, she stepped up to the bars. For a long time she couldn’t bring herself to look to her left, but finally she turned herself to the empty space where Salisk’s face had been these last couple of nights.

Then she looked at her surroundings. Eyes stared back at her from every cell. She read trepidation in them, along with some strange, expectant emotion. And there was rage, smouldering and nascent.

“We’re getting out of here,” she rasped, her words carrying to every ear in the hush. “Tomorrow, we’re tearing our way out of this place. The bastards who decided they could own us, and use us like this… they will pay for it.”


	14. Chapter 14

Gwaelyn Ren folded her arms. To Torlun’s practiced eye, she actually looked impressed.

“That beast for the loss of only one combatant.” Her reluctance to say her next words was palpable. “Respectable.”

“Quite a display of power,” Torlun observed, watching the Jedi halt and then immobilise the Rancor. “Her power tends towards the kinetic. Not unlike our master in that regard.”

“Well, if his suspicions are true, he imprinted much of his knowledge into her mind when he tried to read her mind on the Starkiller.”

“Do I hear jealousy, dear sister?”

The hollow eyes of Gwaelyn’s mask turned to him. Almost imperceptibly, her hand tightened on the glaive. “You hear my firm belief that on that occasion, the master erred. He should have given her over to the torturers.”

Torlun looked at her, amused – though of course his helmet was as impassive as ever. The _Punitive_ was only less than a day from Magna Leptus now, and his sister-Knight chafed at the inactivity.

“I care not for the way that Caumodas has dallied with his prisoners,” Gwaelyn said. “It smacks of recklessness and petty greed, unbecoming of a First Order governor.”

“He is rendering a service to the Supreme Leader.”

“A service which he owes to our master. We of all beings should not confuse duty with generosity.”

This, Torlun reflected, must have irritated his sister greatly indeed. “So you would kill the man who delivers the Supreme Leader the prisoners he desires most?”

“Not openly.” Gwaelyn ran an armoured fingertip along the edge of her blade. “And not immediately. Caumodas should be seen to be rewarded for loyal service and given what he clearly desires – a lavish retirement. Then, after an appropriate amount of time, he should be found murdered and the crime blamed on a politically convenient scapegoat.”

“Deliciously poisonous.”

“‘To thyself be true.’ Is that not what Snoke taught us?”

_Ourselves as he made us,_ Yimur might have responded, for that was quite true. They were creatures of the Ren, bound by the Dark Side to their master at Snoke’s bidding. The people they had been as Jedi Apprentices were, in Yimur’s considered opinion, as good as dead.

But he let it lie. Among other things, the Ren fostered a certain amount of callous pragmatism.

Poe did not have Gwaelyn Ren’s murderous instincts, but he was similarly restless. “That second mug of caff was a mistake. Deeply irresponsible of you to give to me, Hallis.”

“Sir?” The girl wore the hurt look of someone wronged, though she was plainly uncomfortable going against her commanding officer.

“Easy kid,” Suralinda asked, seeing Poe’s scolding for what it really was. “He’s messing with you.” She patted her the younger woman’s shoulder and Hallis smiled a little. She was still learning to gauge Poe’s deadpan.

Chewie growled an admonishment at Poe and cuffed him around the ear for good measure. Suralinda hooted, and even Hallis mustered a nervous laugh.

Poe chuckled, holding his hands up in mock surrender. “You got me there. Sorry, Hallis.”

“Walk it off or get a session in with the weights,” Suralinda told him. “We’ve got, what, a hundred minutes?”

“Ninety minutes before we start moving. I hear you.” Poe headed for the ramp. “But let me know if we get any updates from the others.”

“No getting out of it this time!” a fat industrialist grinned eagerly in the governor’s private booth. “They will kill or they will perish. I commend your resolve, Governor.”

Caumodas sipped his wine, letting the latest wave of praise wash over him. Anticipation for this last fight had been whipped to a true fever-pitch, for the last day that the rebels would tread the sands.

It would be an appropriate occasion; a grand melee, all the survivors of the Rancor fight pitched into combat against other gladiators. No reprieve, no end to the slaughter until one side were all dead. With the duo’s capacity for defiance already proven, guards had been stationed around the perimeter, armed and quite ready to cut down any gladiators who hesitated.

Caumodas had been all for deploying his garrison of Stormtroopers to make the point, but the ringmaster had protested. He wanted the aesthetics preserved.

So Caumodas had kept most of his troops at his residence. The ones he had here would be sufficient to escort the rebels to their handover, assuming they survived until the Knights of Ren came to collect.

Down in the lower levels, the same attendant who had troubled Rey a few days before turned a corner and frowned. That cell shouldn't be open, and its shower certainly shouldn't be on.

Probably that new Pantoran girl he'd seen around, helping herself to the amenities. Sparkies and other specialists got cocky like that. Well… he grinned and stepped into the cell. Hopefully she looked as good under her kit as he suspected, and a good scare would teach her a lesson.

His truncheon thumped on the open door.“Oi!” he crowed. “If you're gonna be in there, you need an audi-”

An elbow came out of the dark and caught him a neat blow to the temple. He crumpled noiselessly.

Ki’rii emerged from the shadows, rolling her shoulder and reaching for her handcuffs. “Jess,” she smiled, “here's your getup. Now pass me some cuffs.”

Jess stepped out of the dark too. “You’ll wanna gag him as well. How’d you know he’d fall for that?”

“He’s petty and an idiot. Kaz told me that, admittedly, but I twigged it soon as I met the slimeball.” She cleared her throat. “Jess come on, get in costume.”

“This is gonna be baggy.”

“You only need it til we get to the office.”

Jess pulled the jacket on. She was in drab cleaner’s overalls, the disguise that had got her inside with Ki’rii. “And the others are in position?”

“Yep,” Ki’rii said, standing guard by the door. “Oh, take his keys too. Best play it safe. Got ‘em?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s be on our way.”

Jess joined her, gave her a quick nod, and they moved out.

“I do hope your friends have their timing down,” LM-976 vocalised quietly, watching the guards. There were still more today, and when Rey moved closer to the shuttered gates, she could see others ringing the arena.

“They will,” she replied.

Nyzar stepped up next to her. “And are the other team in on the joke?”

She nodded. Rose, Ki’rii and their fellow operatives had been diligent in spreading the word. Every gladiator in the place had been informed. A note stuck to the underside of her breakfast tray had told her the _Rapscallion_ was in-system, slowly moving towards Magna Leptus.

Not that she wasn’t nervous. The timing would have to be impeccable on every level. They’d have to overpower these guards, their friends below would have to spring the other gladiators in time to overwhelm the rest, and _then_ they’d have to get clear of the surface before the First Order forces in the city could rally and lock down the area.

So when the gates opened, she barely registered the roar of the crowd or the braying voice of the ringmaster. Her eyes were on the gladiators who strode from the opposite gate. There were more of them than Rey’s group.

Despite her own reassurance to LM, she found herself eyeing their faces, trying to read them. It was an effort to clamp down on her own nerves. She found it difficult to gauge the guarded expressions on the hard, scar-latticed faces.

But she crossed to the centre of the arena, spear held behind her. A male Togruta drew up to her, most of his face hidden by a black iron faceplate.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, feeling the weight of the moment. Then the Togruta spoke. “We are the spark.”

And despite herself, despite what was about to happen, Rey smiled. “That will light the fire.”


	15. Chapter 15

And then the explosions started. Down below, small charges shattered locks and blew cell doors off their hinges. Ki’rii punched a sequence of codes into the control room console, overriding the blast doors. Then she took her blaster to the console, and moved out into the corridors, shedding her jacket.

“Oi!” she shouted to the first few gladiators to emerge, twisting her ring so the Resistance hawk showed and holding up her hand. “Over here!”

“Or here!” A group of figures were next to the adjacent doorway.

The gladiators looked, none of them speaking. Presumably because they were all looking through the entrance, to the rows and rows of weapons and armour.

“We’ve got some presents for you,” Kazuda grinned, gesturing to the open armoury.

The hangar filled with the rumble of engines and swirls of disturbed dust. The steady whine of the fighter craft was joined by the heavy bass of the Millennium Falcon.

BB-8 chirped to Poe over the commlink. Good to go.

“Everyone, call in.”

The confirmations came in. He, Suralinda and Hallis had been joined by Torra Doza, one of Kazuda’s crew. That wasn’t quite optimal, but with Jess committed to the arena breakout, it would have to do.

“Right, he grinned, commencing liftoff. “Let’s bust out of this town.”

In the stands, a dozen audience members pulled concealed blasters from their clothes, aimed at targets they’d already selected and fired. The guards ringing the arena went down in a flurry of shots. Then the attackers turned their guns on the personnel in the stands with them, picking the guards off with pinpoint accuracy while others raced down the stairways and cleared a path out of the arena.

“Now!” Finn barked. More guards hastened into the arena, and the gladiators sprang to meet them.

Rey slammed her hand forward and deflected the first volley of shots. That bought the gladiators time to get in close, and the fight was quickly pulled onto their terms. Her spear rang against a guard’s sword before she pivoted and smacked the hilt into his nose, dropping him. Finn had snatched up a blaster from a fallen opponent and put down three more in quick succession.

Nyzar and LM fought close to them, their movements tight and economical despite the years of pent-up rage they were clearly venting at last.

“Crap,” growled LM. “More of them.” Enemy reinforcements poured in, enough now to surround the gladiators and drive them back, even with the fire from the stands. Twenty became thirty, became fifty, pressing in on the rebels’ defence. A gladiator went down, followed by another. LM took a heavy blow to his shield arm, leaving it hanging uselessly.

There were too many of the enemy now, even for Finn and Rey. All they’d have to do was to have those guards with melee weapons hem the gladiators in and pull back for their blaster-wielding fellows to cut them down.

“That’s us outnumbered,” Nyzar said, pulling back.

But Finn grinned. “Only for the moment.”

A rumble in the background built to a roar, and a ramshackle army came surging up behind the guards and swept over them in a wave of shining blades. Gladiators, dozens of them with Ki’rii, Jess and Rose among the throng.

The guards went down like a field of crops under a threshing machine. A roar went up from the massed fighters, drowning out Rey’s laughter as Jess and Ki’rii thumped into her with open arms, one after the other.

Breaking the embrace, she turned to look up at the stands. Guards were making their way into the stands, but were hampered by the audience’s stampede. Silay’s operatives took care of those who did shoulder their way through the crowd. Still more fell to fire from the gladiators who’d snatched up blasters.

The governor and his retainers, seeing the way things were going, joined the hasty retreat from the arena. Watching them, Rey found herself grinning madly, lost in the triumph of the moment.

“Rey!” Finn barked. He and Rose had already climbed up a ladder into the stands, the gladiators quickly following. “Come on!”

Rey shook herself from her stupor and fled after him, clambering up. Rose and Ki’rii appeared at the head of dozens more fighters and made a beeline for them. Fortunately it looked like the guards had deployed all their people against the Rancor – both they and the monster seemed thoroughly preoccupied.

A screaming voice drew Rey’s eyes upwards. Above her, the ringmaster was raging, his whip forgotten as he railed at whoever of his staff remained below. He’d dropped his megaphone, but she could tell he was hurling invective when his eyes found her. And then he drew a blaster.

In later life she’d look back on this as the best throw she ever made, and the most satisfying. The spear arced through the air and buried itself in the ringmaster’s chest. He goggled at it before, shaking and spluttering, he raised his eyes to Rey’s. Then he pitched forward, over the rail and down to the sand.

Amid the cheering and whooping gladiators, Rose found Rey and Finn. “ _Erso_ ’s in-system – transports coming down now and Poe and Chewie are en route too.”

“And Silay?”

A dry, cracked voice broke in. “Who do you think was up here with the guns?”

Rey turned and found Silay in front of her, bowing a little. “An honour to meet you at last, but let’s continue this meeting somewhere less barbaric, shall we?” There was a smoking blaster in his hands.

Engines sounded over the din outside. Rey’s ears pricked up even as Finn said “That’s the Falcon.”

She turned back to Silay while Finn started moving again, shouting to the gladiators. “Have you got room for our friends?”

“Plenty,” he smiled. And they made for the exit. 

Transports flitted up into the night sky, stealing people away in their hundreds from the First Order’s reach. Once they were aboard, the _Rapscallion_ keyed its engines and leapt to hyperspace, leaving Magna Leptus to its disarray.

Aboard, the ship echoed with a cheerful clamour as the Resistance tried to get a proper headcount of their new friends. In the mess hall, Nyzar and LM had joined Rey, and the others. Ki’rii too had attached herself to the group and no one questioning it.

“Want some help with that arm?” the Pantoran asked LM, seeing it hanging limp. “I’ve got a couple tools here that can take care of that hitch.”

“Wouldn’t say no.” The droid held out his damaged limb and Ki’rii went to work. The others cleared a space and Rey pitched in too, taking up a pair of pliers and pulling splintered metal from the joint. Around them, the chatter went on unabated.

Poe, however, was quiet. “What is it?” Rey asked him, looking up and seeing the calculating edge to his smile.

“Oh, just a couple of ideas,” he grinned back. Then to the two gladiators, “Say, you boys got any plans after this?”

Nyzar raised an eyebrow. “Other than paying off a life debt or two?”

Rey started. “I never meant-”

“But we’ll honour it all the same,” LM said. “Besides, we’ve got a second stab at freedom, and a lot to pay the First Order back for. And we’ll do better at that with your help.”

“Well,” Rey mumbled. “When you put it like that…”

Finn nudged her, just a little reproach in his eyes, and spoke for them all. “We’d be delighted to have you with us. Could always use a couple more scrappers.”

“I’ll say,” Rey laughed.

And the _Rapscallion_ sped off to sanctuary.


	16. Epilogue

The _Punitive_ darkened the sky of a city shaken by the day’s tumult. The gladiator uprising had been localised, the Resistance bringing their transports to the arena and taking them away before the fighting could spread beyond it. Nonetheless, the flight of the spectators had caused more than a little chaos of its own, and Caumodas found himself contemplating a displeasingly high tally of dead and injured guardsmen.

Far worse, however, was the judgement waiting for him.

The Knights of Ren had gone straight to the arena upon their arrival, and Caumodas had to hurry back across the city to find them. He didn’t like this, immediately seeing the reproach and insult in this treatment. He liked the fear in his gut even less.

Upon entering, he found two warriors in black armour, stalking around the arena floor. Neither acknowledged him until he was within reach of them.

“Governor,” one of them intoned. A woman – Gwaelyn, Caumodas surmised.

“My lords.” He bowed. “I trust I find you well.”

The other, the man, turned to regard him. Caumodas recognised Yimur Ren by his regalia.

His words went unacknowledged by the Knight. Instead, Yimur spoke as if the governor hadn’t said anything at all. “Quite a mess. I trust the audience were thoroughly entertained by all this.”

“That may be one way of putting it.” Time to put a positive spin on matters. “Still, we can be confident now that the enemy have been flushed out of the Leptus system.”

It didn’t succeed. A derisive, sneering laugh emanated from Gwaelyn’s veiled-skull helmet. “Did you actually choose that excuse and rehearse it?”

“I-I-”

“You had the Jedi,” Yimur said, his voice flinty even through the distortion of his helmet’s grille. “You had her, and you had the traitor. You could have placed them in the bowels of your fortress and massacred their friends when they came to carry out a rescue. But your arrogance and greed have led to this farce instead.”

“How many, Governor?” Gwaelyn enquired.

Caumodas frowned in confusion. “How -”

“How many credits did you pocket for putting your prisoners on show and allowing their friends to retrieve them?” Gwaelyn didn’t raise her voice; instead it slipped down to become a whisper, the sort that drew you in even though the last thing you wanted was to be close to the hollow eye sockets of her mask.

Caumodas found his throat had suddenly gone very tight. “Seventy million,” he rasped, forcing the words out. “After all bets were taken into consideration.” Had today actually gone as planned, he’d have been looking at twice that.

“Not bad,” Gwaelyn said airily. “For only three days.” She turned to regard Yimur.

Her fellow Knight stood, unmoving, with his gauntleted hand on the hilt of his sword. “Let’s make it seven, then.”

“Seven?” the governor quavered, confused as to their meaning but with the distinct suspicion that it couldn’t be anything good.

Yimur’s sword left its scabbard with an oily sigh. It glinted coldly in the starlight. “You failed the Supreme Leader,” Yimur bluntly told him. “We have of course the deficient security to consider, as it enabled the riot and the escapes. But your decision to delay in announcing the capture, and to put the prisoners on show in such a way, for mere credits…”

“He can have it!” Caumodas’ voice broke. “The Supreme Leader, it’s his! Of course it’s his. All my takings, he can have them!”

“We rather assumed that,” Gwaelyn cut in. “No, my brother speaks of a more direct penalty, the sort which we are better placed to impose. You said seven, Yimur?”

“I haven’t the patience to make seventy cuts,” he replied. “And I doubt this wretch has enough blood in him for that.”

“My lords, I -”

Caumodas got no further than that. Torlun’s sword suddenly blazed with red light and he swung it up, backhanded. It hacked through the governor’s arms just above the wrists.

Caumodas’ world suddenly went very quiet, the pain and shock pushing out all sound. But he felt it when Gwaelyn’s glaive took him across the back of the knees. The two Knights meted out two more cuts each in rapid succession, but he was still conscious when Yimur seized his hair, pulling his head back to lay the sword against his throat.

“One would have thought,” the Knight growled, “that after delighting in the arena for so long, you’d have learned to die better.” And he cut.

“I confess,” Gwaelyn said, watching the slow red flood sink into the sand, “I would have been disappointed were the pursuit to end with the girl merely handed to us. This deserves to be altogether more of a hunt.”

“I rather suspect our master would agree.” Yimur wiped his sword on the governor’s uniform. “In any case, we’ve no need to tarry.”

The Knights of Ren took their leave. The hunt resumed.


End file.
